j7ake17 hours ago
Also suggests 100% WFH is not as good as some weekly face to face time if part of the goal is to keep people motivated and disciplined
I do occasionally do onsites that are valuable for community building so perhaps it’s more 98% wfh
"The kind of people who train alongside you in a gym makes a difference. If you are surrounded by people who are serious and train with a lot of intensity, it's easier for you to do the same thing. But it can be pretty hard to really blast your muscles while the people around you are just going through the motions. That is why good bodybuilders tend to congregate in certain gyms. By having the example of other serious bodybuilders constantly in front of you, you will train that much harder.
That is what made Joe Gold's original gym in Venice, California such a great place—a small gym with just enough equipment, but where you would constantly be rubbing shoulders with the great bodybuilders against whom I had the privilege of competing-like Franco Columbu, Ed Corney, Dave Draper, Robby Robinson, Frank Zane, Sergio Oliva, and Ken Waller. Nowadays, it's rare to find that many champions in the same place, but if you aren't sharing the gym floor with great bodybuilders like Flex Wheeler, Shawn Ray, Nasser El Sonbaty, or Dorian Yates, it can be very motivating if there are pictures or posters of these individuals on the walls or championship trophies displayed.
In 1980, training at World Gym for my final Mr. Olympia competition, I showed up at the gym at seven o'clock one morning to work out and stepped out on the sundeck for a moment. Suddenly the sun came through the clouds. It was so beautiful I lost all my motivation to train. I thought maybe I would go to the beach instead. I came up with every excuse in the book-the most persuasive being that I had trained hard the day before with the powerful German bodybuilder Jusup Wilkosz, so I could lay back today—but then I heard weights being clanged together inside the gym and I saw Wilkosz working his abs, Ken Waller doing shoulders, veins standing out all over his upper body, Franco Columbu blasting away, benching more than 400 pounts, Samir Bannout punishing his biceps with heavy Curls. Everywhere I looked there was some kind of hard, sweaty training going on, and I knew that I couldn't afford not to train if I was going to compete against these champions. Their example sucked me in, and now I was looking forward to working, anticipating the pleasure of pitting my muscles against heavy iron. By the end of that session I had the best pump I could imagine, and an almost wasted morning had turned into one of the best workouts of my life. If I hadn't been there at World Gym, with those other bodybuilders to inspire and motivate me, I doubt that day would have ended up being so productive.
Even today, when I'm training for other reason, such as getting into top shape for a movie role, or just trying to stay in shape, I absorb energy from people working out around me. That's why I still like to go to gyms where bodybuilders are training for competition. Even today, after all this time, it still inspires me."
p. 87 in the 1999 edition of /The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding/, by Schwarzenegger and Bill Dobbins. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0684857219/
But it's the same deal with the folks you work with, run with, climb mountains with.
In fact, in a recent Pump Club newsletter, he said coworkers can make you or break you. Especially if they're sub par.
So sure, maybe individuality is overrated. Sure, community helps.
I think that’s also why children from high achieving families usually do better in adult life. What they view as “normal” is just a higher standard than what most children see. I remember being friends with the son of the local (big) factory owner. They communicated with their children on a totally different level than what I was used to with my parents. When they entered professional life they had a better understanding of the business world than most of us will ever achieve.
You're right, it's a community where you get solid no-nonsense advice, like, ditch the supplements except creatine and maybe whey protein or vegetable protein.
At the same time, he emphasizes building desired habits, to the point where thinking is not required anymore for that purpose. He even goes as far as saying your own brain can be your worst enemy, it wants you to be comfortable.
If I say any more, I'd be overthinking it. It's a good motivational community for fitness in general. Just like you said, specialty communities for specialist advice. But the google news feed I get just scrambles my brains. They've profiled me for 30+ years, and they feed me nonsense now, because I answered many of those questions many years ago. AI is not good at forgetting.
There is also a related feeling of fatigue with our own digital archives - photos, old writings. We like to save them but not to look at them. They evoke powerful and somewhat uncomfortable feelings. And once we write something down, or take a photo of it, it gets out of our head, we don't care about it as much. The simple presence of the archive changes how we think.
Same with email contacts in gmail. Someone I briefly corresponded with about business 15 years ago will pop up as an email address gets typed ahead automatically and I will just smh and type over it. It's good to just move on to new things sometimes. Forget unpleasant jobs in the past.
I suspect that my current social media addiction tendencies is a compensation for not finding good communities for my interests.
This makes me think that there's some friction to this that could be alleviated. Like having more of and more diverse third places.
I used to be part of a number of theatre groups. Those groups did often have dedicated and capable singular people that made it work. But other times it was more of a group effort. Often the most dedicated people arose to the occasion once the context was there, because they had a bit more intrinsic motivation for what we did than others. And in some of the cases we got a lot of help from various institutions for admin and getting a place to practice, which certainly lowered the friction.
Communities can hijack your goals, pulling you toward their agenda instead of yours. Overreliance on them risks eroding self-discipline when the group fades.
Instead, define your goals clearly and use communities sparingly, for knowledge exchange, not validation. Relying on communities too much can leave you stuck in an echo chamber, chasing approval over purpose.
But the thing he describes with StarCraft Vs whatever the brainrot game is can be explained differently. I think the author likes the idea of liking StarCraft, but doesn't actually like playing it. Brainrot on the other hand is engineered to be addictive. Surely if he LIKED playing StarCraft he wouldn't have to be searching for motivation. Personally, I know that in my life I only need motivation for the things I don't like. The things I like I just naturally do a lot.
One insight that I've had is that people often don't really understand what they like and don't like. How many times have you heard "oh I wanna be a writer" "ok what have you written?" "I haven't written anything yet because I'm not a writer yet." These people like the idea of having achieved some end result, but they don't enjoy the process, and aren't even aware that the two are different.
In fact some times I think the word "to like" isn't that useful as it doesn't map well into anything in the mind. I think perhaps we should differentiate between the ideas of "things I planned to do", "things that I did", and "things that when I do make me feel such and such internally". If you re read the post with these ideas in mind, it makes a lot more sense what's happening: the author planned to do one thing and did another. You no longer need to invoke strange ideas like "I need community to give me the motivation to do the thing I already like doing because without motivation I do things I don't like".
But all signals were that the community was dwindling and blizzard wasn't properly invested in the game, which lowered my motivation a lot over time. So my decision was No.
Sure, but so is seeking food. Not controlling one's desire to seek food leads to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. Not moderating one's desire for applause leads to similar issues, more mental neurosis than physical disabilities, but equally harmful in the long run.
> "Looking at successful athletes, founders, musicians, game speedrunners, or overachievers in any area, they seem to have unlimited motivation to do loads of tedious work or practice."
That's also part of many people's marketing and promotion strategies: "I grind all the time". In the real world, random chance, parental resources, or other 'non-self-made-person' factors often play significant roles in apparent success stories. Since people are seeking approval, and the overall society celebrates the 'up-by-your-bootstraps' narrative, people will sell this narrative because they want that approval - addiction to the applause button.
I've seem that desperation for approval that seems rather common in the social influencer world before - in the eyes of a junkie hunting their next fix.
This isn't to say some level of community isn't important and useful - taking a course in a technical subject where you show up at an appointed time with other people and then present your project at the end of the course, that's all good and motivating - but if the only goal is to get more applause, that's mental illness.
I don't have much written, but I think about it daily.
it’s where I learn the most. Talking to people facing similar challenges, hearing how they approach things, learning new tech, and new businesses models. It also builds networking and creates opportunities.
That said, I don’t think everyone needs to build community. Most people won’t, and that’s fine; but just participating makes (and helping the organizer whenever you can) is good
Most people think structure or rules keep a community alive, but they are just tools. What keeps communities alive is just being there for the users and in the channel they are used to talk and be active (whatsapp in my case)
Also when leading a community it is important to step back. Let others speak/ to leave them be. It is easy to "monopolize the mic" but the real magic happens when others start owning the space. Your role as a community organizer is to create a stage for others.
if you ever moderated an IRC channel, it’s the same energy: keep the lights on, be present, but don’t over-control :^)